As is known, a “snapshot” is a representation of a state of a system at a particular point in time. The use of snapshots in storage modeling and migration planning operations facilitates the planning of a data storage system as the system goes through different states during a set of configuration changes. It is to be understood that a data storage system may be part of a datacenter. Snapshots allow an administrator of the datacenter to update the configuration of the data storage system at multiple points in time. The ability to simulate a change to a representation of the datacenter (or data storage center) is referred to as “modeling,” while actually implementing a change to the datacenter is referred to as “migration.” For example, an administrator can model what a datacenter would look like given a proposed change to certain resources of a data storage system, while the actual implementation of the resource change would be considered a migration.
Thus, a snapshot can be an actual copy of the state of the data storage system or a representation of the simulated capabilities of the data storage system. In the former case, actual data of the data storage system is copied into the snapshot while, in the latter case, actual data of the system is not copied into the snapshot. However, it is known that different database schemas exist for snapshot data associated with the actual system (i.e., the former case above where data is referred to as “imported data”) and for snapshot data associated with simulated capabilities of the system (i.e., the latter case above where data is referred to as “modeled data”). It is difficult to combine imported data and modeled data due to the disparate schemas. Thus, with existing approaches, if an administrator wants to generate some type of new migration planning functionality, new data objects have to be added to both schemas. Furthermore, additional overhead is incurred every time imported data and modeled data in snapshots is used, as such data has to be retrieved from two different schemas.
Accordingly, a need exists for improved snapshot data management for modeling and migration planning associated with data storage systems and datacenters.